We know – this web stuff is hard!
Especially when you’re trying to run a restaurant, bar, cafe, bistro, or some other type of food establishment. You need to focus on making sure that your menu offerings are top notch so that the customers will come back again and again.
But what if they can’t even find you in the first place?
More and more people turn to restaurant websites to find hours of operation, menus, even online ordering options before making the decision to visit them. If your site isn’t up to date, then you’re leaving money on the table.
We’ve done some research into what the current best options are for all ranges of time and budget. Here’s our best bets:
Gourmet
In this category, the service will create your site for you, host it, and update it for a monthly fee. For an additional monthly fee, they will even take over your entire social media campaign. Each service gives some example sites that are currently live on their platforms so you can get an idea of what they can provide for you.
$199/mo or $499/mo including social media campaign
ant Engine$199 setup + $49/mo or $99/mo including social media campaign
Casual Dining
In this category, the service has templates available where you can create your site, or there is an option for them to create your site at an additional fee, with a monthly fee after that. Each site is easy to use and maintain on your own, and there are some really unique options available.
You can view existing restaurant pages by visiting their websites.
BentoBoxSetup fee varies, then $49 / mo
or Plate$35 / mo
Cook-Your-Own
Lastly, you can choose to host your own restaurant website. The most economical course for most restaurants today is to use WordPress, which has myriad plugins and themes already build for restaurants, such as the excellent Nuvo Cafe and the fun SmartFood theme.
Once you’ve decided on this path, its up to you to pick a hosting provider. Depending on the traffic you’re expecting , you’re going to want to make sure you pick the right plan. These two are highly recommended for small-to-mid range restaurants.
$99/mo/100,000 visits / mo, Unlimited Data Transfer/20GB Local Storage
$169/mo/Unlimited Bandwidth/Unlimited Data Transfer/1TB Local Storage
So there you have it – 6 different options for restaurants to kick their web presence up a notch.
Have you got any experiences with these you’d like to share? Disagree with our choices? Chime in below.